Three Things You Can Do for Liberty

While Independence Day is about independence from Great Britain, today it’s also associated with more general notions of freedom — individual independence, not just political independence.

Unfortunately, America’s political class doesn’t want you independent. It wants you as dependent as possible. As the Rainmakers sang back in the 1980s, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

So what can you do? Everybody focuses on the 2012 elections, and those are important. But why wait? Here are three things you can do now.

* Attack the funding. Many of the most anti-liberty activities of state and local governments are driven by federal funding — either direct funding, or grants.

There are a lot of these out there, and pro-liberty activists should identify a few and then urge members of Congress to eliminate the funding.

In the soon-to-emerge financial climate, there will be pressure to cut programs all over the place. Politics being what they are, every single program will have its coterie of defenders.

But programs where there is a constituency in favor of cuts will be less common, and are likely to make more appealing targets.

It’s probably best if the arguments are made in favor of money wasted rather than liberty threatened, because, alas, most seasoned politicians aren’t especially sensitive to liberty issues. They haven’t been very sensitive to money-saving, either, but I think that, at least, is about to change.

And don’t be afraid to ask tough questions: If your state university is 60 percent female — and many are — why does it still have a Women’s Center that was originally set up to ease the transition when it went coed decades ago?

Why are public schools offering DARE programs (shown not to work) but cutting gifted programs? You’d be surprised how much influence you can have by showing up at a city council meeting or a congressman’s town hall session and asking questions — especially if it’s on community-access cable.

* Stop supporting the enemies of freedom and start supporting your friends. Cancel your subscriptions to cable TV channels, magazines or newspapers that support big government over individual liberty.